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The 54th Tavern Brawl is called "Pick a Hand, Any Hand". It is a new Brawl, and decks are created using your own collection.

Pick a Hand, Any Hand is similar in some ways to the popular recent Brawl, Top Two. The rules are that you have to pick the first seven cards of your deck, and the rest of the deck is filled with Unstable Portals. The interesting part is that the Portals are added AFTER you mulligan. This means that you are pretty much choosing your opening hand.

The premise could lead to a very interesting metagame. I would expect cards like Mana Wyrm, Sorcerer's Apprentice, and Innervate to be very popular, and for people to try to get very fast starts for a minion based deck. Beyond that, it will need a lot of playtesting, but we have seen in the past that counter decks to the initial decks soon start being played, and that those decks often play removal rather than minions. It will be important to try to stay one step ahead of the metagame if you are going to have a high win rate.

As always, you are encouraged to post your efforts in the comments section below. If there are enough, I will do a mini-awards section again, where absolutely nothing apart from pride will be on the line!

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Anton "Dvck" Lund found his way out of a jam on the ladder. Can you?
Dvck and Aleco discuss the importance of planning ahead, understanding the meta, and knowing when to pivot your role in a matchup.
The player interviews I've done with RayC and TerrenceM have been some of the most fun and informative episodes of "What's the Move?", so I was very excited when Anton "Dvck" Lund reached out to me via reddit with a play from a recent game of his. Playing as Combo Dragon Priest, Dvck was able to find his way out of a tough spot against Murloc Paladin. Can you do the same?
In this week's episode, Dvck and I discuss the importance of planning ahead, understanding the meta, and knowing when to pivot your role in a matchup. For what ended up being a relatively short episode by "WTM" standards, I was pleasantly surprised by how much we were able to break down together so quickly. The interview with Dvck was as fun as it was informative, so I hope to have him back on the show soon! If you're interested in watching some high-legend gameplay, be sure to tune into Dvck's stream on twitch.tv.
You can look forward to a few more episodes about the Hearthstone World Championships in the coming weeks, but I always welcome submissions and suggestions for future episodes. Did you have a favorite play from the world championships? Feel free to link me the VOD here on Icy Veins or send me a message on twitter @Aleco_P.
Thanks for watching!

Kolento and ShtanUdachi found themselves in nearly identical situations at the world championships - but did they make the same decisions?
Episode 14 of "What's the Move?" discusses the importance of being mana efficient in the early game, as well as the relationship between speed and value.

The Hearthstone World Championships were full of incredible plays, sticky situations, and valuable lessons to be learned from the best players on the planet. There were far too many great plays to analyze in a single video, so for the next few episodes of "What's the Move?" I'll be breaking down all of my favorite plays from the World Championship weekend.
To kick things off we have a pair of Tempo Rogue vs. Highlander Priest matchups featuring Kolento and ShtanUdachi. Both players drew nearly identical opening hands, but did they did make same decisions?
If you managed to spot a particularly tricky or interesting play from the recent World Championships, please feel free to link it in the comment section below! I'd love to break down as many viewer-submitted topics as I can in the coming weeks and months, and I have little doubt that I may have missed some of the most fascinating plays from the tournament during my initial viewing.
Wishing you all the best of luck in the post-nerf meta!
- Aleco

Welcome to the post-Corridor Creeper meta.
Hearthstone Update 10.2 is now live worldwide and it's a big one!
The first change it brings are the nerfs to four cards that have terrorised dominated the meta up until now. Bonemare now costs 8 mana, Patches the Pirate no longer has Charge, Raza the Chained makes the Hero Power cost (1) instead of (0) and Corridor Creeper has been butchered down to 2 attack. You can read Aleco's interesting opinion piece on Blizzard's nerf policy here.
The second big addition of this patch is the Ranked Play update, which will take effect on March 2018. Players will now drop only 4 ranks with each monthly reset, all ranks will have 5 stars and you will only need to win 5 Ranked games to earn the monthly card back.
The Year of the Mammoth Bundle is also finally available on the Shop. For $19.99 or 19.99 EUR, you can get 30 packs - 10 for each of the Year of the Mammoth expansions (Un'Goro, KFT, K&C). Don't forget that the Quest for Packs event is still ongoing and an addition has been made to the grand prize winner reward: $1.200 (read here for more info)!
Lastly, the patch introduces the Wildfest event. From February 19 to March 11, Hearthstone is going Wild! Initially, you will be able to draft cards in Arena mode that are exclusive to Wild. Second, even though Tavern Brawl is usually on Wild format, there will be two special Wild Brawls. The first one is called "Venture Into the Wild" and it will just contain premade Wild decks for each class. The second one, "The Wild Brawlisseum", is basically a Wild Heroic Tavern Brawl, but with a major improvement: the first run will be free for everyone. You can read more about Wildfest here.
Below you can read the patch notes, which describe all the updates as well as various bug fixes. A massive change is that the timer for the first two turns will now be shorter!
Daxxarri
The tavern is buzzing with all the stuff that’s packed into this Hearthstone update! There’s a Ranked Play update, a Wild party, card changes, and a chance to save on packs with a new Mammoth Card Bundle! We managed to squeeze in some card backs and bug fixes too!

Whew! Read on for details!

Ranked Play Update – This Hearthstone update brings changes to Ranked Play, starting March 1st. Read the Ranked Play Updates blog for details!
Your reset will not be based on the stars you earned over the season. Instead, you’ll reset to four ranks below the highest rank you achieved during the season.
Players at Legend reset to rank 4, 0 stars.
All ranks will have 5 stars.
Starting in March, you will no longer earn the monthly card back by reaching Rank 20. Instead, you can earn each season’s card back by winning 5 games in Ranked Standard or Wild at any rank.
Card Changes – Please read the Upcoming Balance Changes blog on the official Hearthstone site for full details regarding the reasons and philosophy behind these changes.
Corridor Creeper – Now has 2 attack, down from 5.
Patches the Pirate – No longer has Charge.
Raza the Chained – Now reduces your Hero Power cost to 1 instead of 0.
Bonemare – Now costs 8 mana, up from 7.
Wildfest!
From February 19th through March 11th join us for a Wild party! Read the Wildfest blogfor details!
Wild cards return to the Arena for the duration of Wildfest.
Venture into the Wild – A Tavern Brawl celebrating Wild with pre-built decks.
The Wild Brawliseum – A special Tavern Brawl where you’ll build and lock-in a Wild deck, and then see if you can take it to twelve wins versus other players! Three losses and your run comes to an end.
Your first Brawliseum run is free!
Additional runs are available for the same price as Arena tickets. Also like the Arena, prizes are based on number of wins, and follow the Arena reward structure.
Year of the Mammoth Bundle
For a limited time, purchase 10 packs each of Journey to Un’goro, Knights of the Frozen Throne, and Kobolds & Catacombs—a total of 30 packs!—for a special price.

Added the following card backs:
Sparkles - Acquired from achieving Rank 20 in Ranked Play, February 2018.
Year of the Mammoth – Acquired from winning five games in Ranked Play, March 2018.
Bug Fixes & Updates
Gameplay
The turn timer for the first two turns of a match are now shorter, though they should still be significantly longer than most players take on those turns.
Switching from Valeera the Hollow to Deathstalker Rexxar will now correctly allow Rexxar’s Battlecry to destroy minions buffed to 2 health by Stormwind Champion or similar effects.
Nemsy Necrofizzle’s Hero frame is now golden if you have unlocked the golden Warlock Hero.
Removed rarity gems from several summoned minions.
Playing multiple copies of Temporus in a row will now queue up sequences of two turns for your opponent and two turns for you.
Fixed a bug where the Divine Shield provided by Elixir of Purity could not be silenced.
Spectators now see green highlights on playable cards for both players.
Fixed an issue that could cause Hearthstone to freeze when a spectated player disconnects and their opponent concedes.
Tooltips for Hero Cards now appear correctly when spectating.
Resolved a crash that could occur when drawing a Darkness Candle spell after The Darkness is no longer dormant.
Grand Archivist can now correctly cast the Darkness Candle spell if it is present in a player’s deck.
Resolved a crash that could occur when certain cost reducing cards were played.
Resolved an unintended interaction that could occur with Anomalus, Taunt minions, and Commanding Shout.
Added missing Collection Manager tooltips to several cards.
Resolved an issue that could cause a player to become stuck when reconnecting before the first turn.
Resolved an issue that would prevent the progress notification for more than one Daily Quest from being shown after a match is complete.
Ice Breaker now correctly destroys Rotface without activating his effect if he is Frozen.
Resolved interface issues that could arise when retiring an Arena game.
Resolved an issue that would allow the Friends menu to remain active while a Friendly Challenge is active.
Fixed various minor visual and text issues.
Dungeon Run & Adventures
The cards that appear in several loot categories have been adjusted slightly.
Cards stolen by Gloves of Mugging now appear in history tile when played by an opponent.
Resolved a visual issue with Candlebeard’s charge enchantment banner.
[Adventures] Atramedes now correctly uses his Hero Power whenever he should.
Mobile
Resolved an issue with the Collection Manager that could allow the set filter to be interacted with behind the “Done” button.
Scrolling through an Arena deck on a mobile device will no longer generate unnecessary prompts.
The “Back” button will now function correctly after an Arena run is complete.
History tiles that were queueing up while viewing a history event now populate correctly.
Resolved an issue that could cause crafted cards to remain visible over the Collection Manager.
Corrected a visual issue with the search bar in the Collection Manager.
[Android] Resolved an issue with the download progress indicator.
[iOS] Compatibility now requires iOS 8.0 or later.
[iOS] The client will no longer sometimes freeze when a spectated player wins a match.
(source)

According to the Principal Game Designer, Cubelock isn't as powerful as it seems.
Cubelock won't be touched in the upcoming balance changes which, for many people, is a sign that the deck will completely dominate the meta after said changes become active.
The deck is already prominent enough that people have started making false claims about it. A Reddit user claimed that he faced 17 Cubelocks in a row! However, Mike Donais put the matter into place by saying that there was no such streak in Blizzard's internal data and that Cubelock is currently the 12th best deck.
He subsequently explained that he expects the deck to rise after the nerfs, but he's not too worried because it's a challenging (and expensive, I would add) deck to master. If the team feels that Cubelock is too powerful, though, they will evaluate it.
mdonais
I just checked the data, and no one played 17 cubelocks in a row today.
If you are indeed having trouble with Cubelock there are several decks that beat it consistently right now. It is currently the 12th best deck.
I did enjoy the title of your post though. (source)

A couple people asked why the stats I mentioned don't metch VS power ranking so I looked up VS 79 and across all rankings Control Warlock is the 10th best deck. I assume they mix control and cube warlock in their stats. We have decks broken out a bit more but 10th gives you the general idea.
Obviously after the nurfs it will be stronger since none of the cards in cubelock are being nurfed and that concerns me but it is a pretty challenging deck with a lot of opportunities to show off player skill. People will eventually get better at playing it, but people will also put in more weapon destruction or silence cards if it gets more popular.
I am excited to see what people figure out after the patch. If Warlock is a big problem after people have some time to adjust and tune the new decks then we will look into it. I have said many times before that win rate is not the most important factor in our nurf decisions. How people feel matters more, so we will listen to players and make decisions based on that, just like we did in the past with Quest Rogue and Patron Warrior. (source)

The latest balance patch to Hearthstone raises some questions about Blizzard's policy on nerfs.
Is it better to fix problematic cards in a vacuum, or to use nerfs as a tool for crafting a specific meta?
Four of Hearthstone's most problematic cards will be on the receiving end of some serious nerfs in a future balance patch; a massive move by Blizzard which is just as exciting as it is confusing.
On one hand, each of the four cards receiving nerfs were individually problematic. If nerfing a problematic card is the same thing as "fixing a problem", then the upcoming balance patch is fixing four major problems and should ultimately prove to be a positive change for the game.
On the other hand, the most dominant class in the meta (Warlock) was left untouched, while one of its strongest competitors (Priest) took a serious a hit with the nerf to Raza the Chained. It stands to reason that nerfing classes other than Warlock should widen the gap between it and its closest competitors, which could lead to a potentially toxic ladder environment dominated by a single class (not unlike the early days of the Frozen Throne meta which were ruled by Druid).
Furthermore, the timing of the nerfs to Patches the Pirate and Raza the Chained feel a bit... late. Both cards will rotate from Standard when the first set of 2018 drops (likely in April), and neither of these cards became suddenly problematic in Kobolds & Catacombs. Patches has been one of the most toxic and dominant cards in the game since it was released in 2016, and Raza has been the linchpin of the most dominant deck since the last balance patch. Blizzard is obviously acknowledging that these cards are problematic, but why wait until now to do so?
Regardless of whether or not you expect the upcoming changes to be positive or negative, these nerfs call into question the strategy that Blizzard and Team 5 employ when balancing Hearthstone. Let's attempt to decode the message that Blizzard sent its player base with this balance patch, and see if we can make sense of it all.
Blizzard Balances For The Present, Not The Future

Not touching Warlock in the upcoming patch is consistent with Blizzard's recent strategy of balancing Hearthstone. When Jade Druid decks were too powerful in the early days of the Knights of the Frozen Throne meta, Blizzard successfully lowered the power level of the deck without completely killing it by nerfing both Innervate and Spreading Plague. However, they didn't touch the clear-cut second best deck in the meta, Highlander Priest, and the pro Hearthstone community was quite vocal about their concerns with Highlander Priest becoming the next overly-dominant deck. It's fair to say that things went exactly as the pros predicted, and here we are five months later nerfing Raza the Chained. What gives?
Despite the predicted era of Highlander Priest dominance which followed the Jade Druid nerfs, Blizzard's policy to only fix the problems of the present is a fair one. Metagames on the whole are fickle and largely unpredictable, and attempting to fix all of the future problems which may or may not occur after a balance patch is a slippery slope. If Blizzard were to have pushed the nerf to Raza to the KFT balance patch, they would have merely created another "next best deck" in the process. Should they have also nerfed that deck? And the next one?
Though Highlander Priest was a particularly obvious deck to be concerned about in a post-Jade Druid world, setting the precedent of preemptively nerfing healthy decks is a dangerous one. If Blizzard had nerfed Raza in the previous patch, they would have put themselves in a position where they would be forced to address the most powerful deck in the meta each time they want to make changes to problematic cards. Just because a deck is the "best deck in the meta" doesn't necessarily mean that the deck is unhealthy, and signaling to your player base that you don't want a clear best deck to exist coming out of every balance patch opens the door to constant scrutiny.
Blizzard Is Inconsistent With Its Timing

You'll be hard pressed to find a single Hearthstone pro who isn't happy to see Patches the Pirate and Corridor Creeper get hit by the nerf hammer. Both of these cards were seeing far too much play in the current meta and were responsible for determining the outcome of an outrageous number of games. Aggro mirrors far too often came down to who did or didn't draw these cards in the early game, and something needed to be done about that.
When it comes to Corridor Creeper, Blizzard was incredibly swift in addressing the card's endemic playrates. This balance patch was announced mere days after the World Championships had concluded, which for all intents and purposes is the earliest possible time they could have announced it. In other words, they identified that Corridor Creeper was problematic and nerfed it as soon as possible, which is why I'm confused about how long it took for them to nerf Patches.
Patches has always been a toxic card. For more than a year and half he's been in charge of the Hearthstone metagame, and Blizzard's justification for nerfing the card now (to keep him from ruining the Wild metagame for years to come) feels too little too late. Despite the fact that Corridor Creeper is currently seeing higher play rates than Patches, it's difficult for me imagine why Creeper demanded an immediate nerf while Patches was allowed to reign supreme for as long as he did. Now that Blizzard has set the precedent of nerfing widely-played cards like Corridor Creeper immediately, I'd like to at least see them be consistent with this trend in the future.
Blizzard Undervalues The Human Element

I imagine the reason why Corridor Creeper was nerfed immediately yet Patches the Pirate was allowed to stay in his current form for as long as he was has something to do with Blizzard's internal stat tracking. I have little doubt that Corridor Creeper will raise more statistical red flags than Patches due to the fact that it's rarely (if ever) a bad card to draw in aggro decks, whereas Patches is arguably the worst card to draw in the entire game. When you average out the games that Patches both single-handedly wins and loses, he likely tests as a "worse" card than Corridor Creeper does statisically, which could be used as justification for why he was left untouched for as long as he was.
Though the actual stats surrounding a cards win rates should be a major factor when it comes to balance updates, I believe that Blizzard should put a little more weight on the "human element" of cards. Whereas Creeper may be the stronger card, it doesn't feel nearly as bad as Patches does. Regardless of whether or not the stats said that the card needed a nerf, Hearthstone would have almost certainly been a better game if Patches was nerfed at the same time as Small-Time Buccaneer. The same can probably be said for Ultimate Infestation when it comes to the previous balance patch. Though Blizzard's internal stats told them that Spreading Plague was more responsible for Jade Druid's dominance in the early KFT meta, it doesn't feel nearly as bad to lose to as Ultimate Infestation does. And that's important.
At the end of the day, I believe that stats shouldn't be the only thing which dictates whether or not a card deserves to be nerfed. Cards like Patches and Ultimate Infestation have caused far more headaches and groans than smiles and cheers, regardless of what the statistics say. Hearthstone is a video game, video games are supposed to fun, and cards that have drawn hate for as long as Patches and Ultimate Infestation have seriously get in the way of that.
On the whole, I'm quite happy with the nerfs that will be coming in the next balance patch and am excited for the future of Hearthstone. Despite the concerns surrounding Warlock, I'm happy to see that Blizzard isn't the business of preemptively handling problems which may or may ever exist. I'd much rather endure a few months of Warlock dominance (especially after how bad the class was in Journey to Un'Goro) than live in a world where every "best deck in the meta" has a constant target on its back for Blizzard's nerf gun.